This is the industry taxpayers are being dragged into

I drive a Yaris, which is not a hybrid but is damn-well fuel-efficient, even the way I drive it. I have a few friends that drive hybrids, and I have nothing against the cars. As a commuter vehicle or for people who get all angsty about the non-existent threat of MMGW (er, climate change), they are excellent deals for good cars. Yet, as the Detroit automakers let the Fed through the door, they are also going to be letting them dictate what kinds of cars they can produce, and make no mistake, those cars will be hybrids or small subcompacts like my Yaris. When gas is cheap, you can imagine what happens. Which means the Fed will have an incentive to ratchet up prices to sell the fuel-efficient cars it will be forcing Detroit to produce. 

From the LAXs:

Last month, only 15,144 hybrids sold nationwide, down almost two-thirds from April, when the segment's sales peaked and gas averaged $3.57 a gallon. That's far larger than the drop in industry sales for the period and scarcely a better showing than January, when hybrid sales were at their lowest since early 2005.